The Mini Bento Arm is a 3D printable robotic arm designed specifically for education and take home rehabilitation applications. Building off the success of the full-scale Bento Arm (which has been used extensively as a robotic prosthesis for myoelectric training and research), the 1/3 scale Mini Bento Arm provides many of the same features for a fraction of the cost. The XL330-M288-T actuators from Robotis are used in the arm to provide up to 4 movements and include joint feedback that can be used for sensory feedback or machine learning. The arm can be controlled through a computer via our brachI/Oplexus software or directly via the onboard OpenRB-150 controller through an Arduino interface. 

We are pleased to announce that the Mini Bento Arm has now been released open source on GitHub. This release includes both the 3D printable hardware as well as the core Arduino scripts for running and testing it. Preliminary integration of the Mini Bento Arm with the brachI/Oplexus software is currently in beta and available upon request to anyone who wants early access to it.

The following trailer video of the Mini Bento Arm shows off some of the things it can do:

Acknowledgements:

We would like to thank the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) and the University of Alberta for their continued support in this project.